“If you’re a Steeler – once a Steeler, always a Steeler. I mean the Steelers faithful travel extremely well. But as an individual, if they made me choose a team going in to the Hall of Fame, I would have chosen the Pittsburgh Steelers, but as a whole, I have to thank every single team that I played with. I enjoyed the ten years that I had with the Steelers, it was remarkable, it was my start, but it wasn’t my finish. I think the vast majority of the body of work was done in Pittsburgh but the four years I spent in Baltimore, I got the ring, I transitioned positions in Baltimore, met a lot of great individual players, have a lot of great friendships from there. Same thing with the 49ers and same thing with the Raiders, so you know, it’s kind of hard. I’m a bi-racial person in life, I’m a mixed race, and I’m a mutt in football. I played on multiple teams and it was fun.”

Awesome. We’ll see how that plays out, when Rod is inducted later this year.

That picture up top is from my favorite Woodson moment, during one of the worst losses in team history. Rod lost all but part of the first game of the 1995 season due to an ACL tear, but came back for the Super Bowl XXX loss to the Cowboys in January. That’s unheard of in today’s NFL. Woodson tipped a pass that was going towards star WR Michael Irvin, then immediately started pointing to his rebuilt knee.

That’s Steelers football. And that’s why you go into the Hall as a member of the Black and Gold.